Chapter 45
Chapter Forty-Five
I’m not sure if I’m dreaming. Flashing lights make me squint. A heavy weight across my body. Fire burning inside my chest.
Then an angelic, angry voice. “Don’t you give up on me! We’re getting help. You hang on. Don’t you go out on me again.”
“I’m not going anywhere. Can’t.” A wet wracking cough hits me. “Fuck, my head, that hurts.”
Allison’s rain-soaked fingers slide over my temple.
She kisses me on the cheek, her nose bouncing against me as the boat slices through the waves. “What happened on the dock? You were crouching down?”
+++
Silence…Darkness…
I’m being stabbed in the arm.
I can’t even open my eyes, but I know that feeling. “Jesus, what gauge needle are you using?”
An unfamiliar voice calls out next to me. “He’s awake!”
When I force my lids up, the room is too bright.
Shit. Give me a break.
“Someone draw the damned blinds.”
“Somebody’s a baby.”
I recognize that wisecrack. “Justice.”
A large hand lands on my arm. “Somebody’s going to be glad as hell to see you, and she’s going to be angry as a badger that I made her get some sleep.”
When I open my eyes fully this time, my friend is leaning over the side of the bed. Dark circles. Worry lines. Too much stubble.
“She’s okay?” I rasp, feeling everything in my throat—the drowning, the emotions that are clawing their way up from my heart, and the desperate need to see my girl.
“She’s good. Worried, but that girl is resilient. Got yourself a keeper.”
Fuck.
Water builds in the corner of my eyes until it leaks out.
“How long have I been out?”
He glances at the nurse who is now attaching an IV bag to the fresh line she just started.
“Three days.” He scrubs his hand over his jaw. “A rough three days.”
“Mr. Reese,” the nurse says softly, “you had a very serious infection. When they brought you in, your fever was dangerously high.”
“What?”
Justice grips my shoulder. “Allison said you were complaining of a headache, and that you were sweating when you were searching the house.”
I grunt as I’m assaulted by memories of being in that house with the woman I want to hide away from the world. “Of course, I was sweating. It was stressful as fuck.”
Justice makes a face and apologizes to the nurse. “Sorry, he’s salty.”
She clucks over me, tucking my sheet in and checking the IV pole once again. “He’s not the worst, trust me. Do you want me to call Ms. Westerly?”
“No! Let her sleep.” I wince when my throat protests my outburst.
Justice chuckles. “Man, we’re going to be in the doghouse together. That’s not gonna sit well.”
I almost smile. “I’ll make it up to her.”
When I shift, a sharp pain stabs through my chest. “Did you break my ribs, you bastard?”
“Only a few.”
“Get me some water.”
“What am I, now?”
“My nursemaid.”
He growls. “Don’t get used to it. I’m rolling. Going to break into Westerly’s primary factory this evening.”
This gets my attention. “What’s going on?”
“Rosalie, Allison’s contact, wasn’t at her place. Landlord said he hasn’t seen her in days. Your girl thinks her father grabbed Rosalie because of that rock sample.”
The rib pain gets worse until I’m panting in little short breaths. “You’re not taking Allison with you.”
“Maybe you should calm down.”
I beam him with a plastic cup. It’s the only thing I can reach. “Maybe you should tell me right now that you’re not taking my woman with you on any more missions. I’ll be breaking some of your ribs if you even try.”
He grins as he fills my cup with water and takes a swig.
Bastard.
“That was my water.”
“Play nice.”
“You’re just annoying the injured guy. Maybe you should leave. I’ll call the real nurse in here, she probably won’t give me any lip.”
Snickering, he grabs another cup off the counter behind him. “I don’t know. You haven’t been a good patient.”
“Like I'll believe anything you said.”
“Ask her about you pulling your catheter out and why they tied you down.”
“Oh, fuck.”
The door swings open. Beast and the big boss, Marshall, stride in, assessing the room in a way only operators do.
“Man, it’s good to see you, but Jesus…” The relief in Beast’s expression is a sharp reminder that I must look like shit and I’ve given everyone a scare.
“Same.” I clear my throat from days-worth of rust. “Thanks for coming.”
Marshall taps the foot of the bed. “Now that you’re awake, we can catch you up on Daddy Westerly. Unless you want us to save it ‘til tomorrow.”
“No, let’s get this wrapped so Allison can be free of whatever the hell is going on.”
Marshall and Beast look at each other.
Beast comes around to the side of the bed and leans against the counter. “About that… Westerly’s plane didn’t land that day. Unfortunately, we lost track of them.”
“How? That’s impossible.”
“That’s what we’ve been saying.”
Justice’s expression darkens as he folds his arms. “The other problem is the yacht is on the move. Sometime after the storm abated, it left the harbor and has been moving along the coast. We haven’t had time to board it to look for anything.”
Closing my eyes, I try to reach for calm. It escapes me, making my bone marrow crackle with heat. “So, we don’t know what he’s up to. Allison is still in danger.”
Marshall lifts a shoulder. “Can’t say for sure, but you won’t have to worry about that. I’m sending you and Allison to the cave bunker?—”
“Resort, you mean?” Justice shakes his head as he chuckles.
Beast says, “It’s a really nice cave.”
“It’s a five-star hotel,” Justice adds.
Marshall chuckles, looking pleased. “It was. Now it’s ours.”
I shake my head, then regret it when my brain protests.
Something’s still not quite right, but I did just wake up. “Are you serious? We can go to this bunker-hotel-thing and lay low?”
With a gigantic hand, Marshall grips my shoulder. “That’s what it’s for. Family. Keeping the people we love safe.”
It becomes impossible to swallow.
Justice, as usual, capitalizes on the opportunity to make a joke. “You’re leaking. I thought you puked all the saltwater up.”
“Don’t you have a factory to break into?”
“Rude, man. And I was taking care of your ass.”
Another figure strolls in the door, and I get another lump in my throat.
Axle.
“You’re looking better,” he says with a sharp grin.
“Feeling better. What about you?”
“Getting there. I’m glad you’re finally awake. I’m heading out of the country, so I wanted to stop in to look at your ugly mug one more time.”
I glare at them all. “What is this, give Truck shit hour?”
“Oh, have I been missing the fun?” Axle shakes hands with the others. “Gentlemen, if you’ll excuse us. I’d like to speak to my twin alone.”
The room is clear seconds later.
Axle, lowers himself into a plastic chair and leans back. He’s moving gingerly. He’s lost weight. But he’s looking ten times stronger than the last time I saw him.
“Glad you’re alive.”
“Ditto.”
A dense silence fills the gap.
“I want to talk to you about Hope.”
A dull blade cuts through me. “Fuck.” What else am I supposed to say? My heart has clawed itself up into my throat.
“You know I would never cheat with your fiancée.”
Exhaling slowly, I watch him. Axle’s never outright lied to me. That’s not how we operate, but months of agonizing inside my head over the text messages I found on Hope’s phone have made me insane.
“What about the texts?” My voice is rusty, barely understandable to my own ears.
“I should have told you.”
The dull knife twists, pain gathering around it like a well of black lava. “But you didn’t.”
“She was thinking of leaving.”
Fucking hell. “I think you should leave. Now. I’m too fucked up on drugs to deal with this.”
“Truck, she wasn’t leaving for me. She just couldn’t be happy, and she didn’t know how to do it without hurting you. So she asked me.”
His words slowly filter into my fogged brain. “Wait…”
He rubs a hand over his jaw and drops his gaze to the floor. “Every single day I think about how if I’d told you maybe you could have talked. Maybe that day you wouldn’t have been arguing over some bullshit thing because she was really trying to find herself, and pushing you away because she couldn’t be happy.”
A sob jerks inside my chest. For a few long minutes I fight the tsunami inside of me that wants to rip me limb from limb.
“When I saw…” I force a few breaths. “Those texts between you and her, I couldn’t take it.”
“Is that why you’ve been so mad at me?”
I nod, using the sleeve of my hospital gown to angrily swipe at my face. “I didn’t want to believe it, but the proof was there.”
“Proof that I was the person closest to you and she wanted my advice.”
“The texts didn’t look like that.”
Clasping his hands, he holds my gaze, a torture so much like my own in identical eyes. “I have them all if you want to read them. I don’t know what she kept or deleted. I’m sure it could look like anything if you only saw a few of the messages.”
“Fucking hell.” I cover both eyes with my hands, making the IV line tug until the medication dispenser begins to send out a loud alarm.
“I’m sorry, brother. You didn’t deserve that kind of pain.” Axle reaches over, puts his hand on my calf. “I hated seeing you break down.”
I stare at his hand, trying to breathe around the agony of losing Hope. Of finding out she didn’t love me. That she wanted to leave. It’s a muddy, chaotic pain that presses me back into the bed.
“I should have been here for you. You know you didn’t kill her, don’t you?”
“But the climbing gear I set failed.” I choke out, my eyes welling over with hot thick tears. “When the protection pulled out, she fell.”
He doesn’t look away. Doesn’t flinch. Steady, strong, he offers a comforting presence. “You saw the report. It was an equipment failure.”
I look away, memories tripping over themselves, spinning into a blur of agony. “She trusted me to keep her safe.”
“And you did everything you could.”
Then a truth comes out of me, I’ve been too terrified to voice. “I don’t know if I can protect Allison.”
“Brother, that’s all you’ve done. You need to believe in yourself again.”
“It will always bother me,” I admit.
“As I would expect. But it doesn’t have to define your future.”
When he leans back in the chair, clasping the back of his neck, his fatigue is showing.
“You gonna get some rest and heal up?”
The glint in his eyes says, no. “Gotta wrap up this situation.”
“Then?”
“I might take some time off.”
“Come find me.”
He tips his chin. “We should go fishing or something.”
“I’m gonna take a break from the water.”
He grins and stands. “Understandable. But you know…you can take the frogman out of the water, but you can never take the water out of a frogman.”
“Jesus, don’t quit your day job to become a philosopher.”
“Nah. I like blowing things up too much.” He pinches his lips together at the corners and whistles loudly. “You guys, come on in.”
Meeting over. Axle rolls like that. No one calls the shots. Guess we’re the same when it comes to that.
As the guys file in, he taps the foot of the bed. “I’ll be in touch when I’m done. We’ve got some more things to talk about. Like when you’re going to marry Allison.”
With a calloused hand the exact size of mine, he shakes mine, holding it longer than I expect. “She’s right for you. I hope I get that lucky one day.”
“I know, man.” My words are thick, choked out. “Stay out of the way of those knives, you fucker.”
“Copy.” He ducks his head, says his goodbyes to my team, and strides out the door.
Not thirty seconds later, a streak of blonde hair and black clothing flies into the room. Her hands shoot up to cover her mouth.
“ Oh, my god! You’re awake.”